Obama ads lash Romney record at 'vampire' Bain Capital

AP's Ken Thomas reports the Obama campaign will launch a major offensive today to discredit Mitt Romney as a job creator, going after his record at Bain Capital with a heavy-duty negative ad:

President Barack Obama is casting Mitt Romney as a greedy, job-killing corporate titan with little concern for the working class in a new, multi-pronged effort that seeks to undermine the central rationale for his Republican rival's candidacy: his business credentials.

At the center of the push — the president's most forceful attempt yet to sully Romney before the November election — is a biting new TV ad airing Monday that recounts through interviews with former workers the restructuring, and ultimate demise, of a Kansas City, Mo., steel mill under the Republican's private equity firm.

"They made as much money off of it as they could. And they closed it down," says Joe Soptic, a steelworker for 30 years. Jack Cobb, who also worked in the industry for three decades, adds: "It was like a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us."

The ad, at the unusual length of 2 minutes, will run in five battleground states: Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado. The campaign declined to describe the size of the ad buy though it's in the middle of running a $25 million, month-long ad campaign in nine states. A longer version of the ad was being posted online Monday.

It is no surprise that Bain would be at the center of the president's anti-Romney case, and GST Steel has long been viewed as a clear weak point in Romney's private-sector career. Up to this point, Romney's foes have only gone after Bain in fits and starts, and responding to a sustained attack on his Mr. Fix-It credentials is a critical test for both Romney and his larger operation.